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After breaking out the TV Guides recently and writing about the 1986 Fall Preview issue it got me thinking about a handful of the other columns here at Branded that I haven’t touched in years. There was a time when I was buying vintage stickers left and right to share here at the site, but I had sort of hit a wall about 6 years ago when the vintage sticker market began to boom and the prices on the secondary market were getting insane. Things have cooled down a bit over the last couple of years as the cultural nostalgia has begun shifting its laser focus from the 80s on to the 90s, and the prices have started to fall a bit. Granted, not enough that I can justify completely diving back into vintage sticker collecting, but enough that I occasionally pick up some new stuff from time to time.

One of the 80s era branding holes in my sticker collection that I’ve been meaning to fill for years is Rainbow Brite. I remember watching the movie (RB and the Star Stealer) and loving it, but being a boy I never had any of the plush or PVC figures, so it’s one of the series that I’m mostly unfamiliar with. With the recent news that there is a new cartoon launching, I thought it would be fun to share some of these vintage Hallmark sticker sheets I picked up awhile ago that were released back in 1983…

Sort of like Strawberry Shortcake there seems to be a ton of color-themed characters in the series, and a good chunk of them are featured in these stickers sheets. Above we get some examples of Canary Yellow, Patty O’Green, and Red Butler along with the fluffy white Sprite Twink. Of course there’s also Rainbow Brite herself, and below we get to see her stallion Starlite…

I thought it was cool to see this villain specific sheet as well featuring Murky (the evil Super Mario looking guy) and his bumbling fuzzball of a sidekick Lurky. I love their sweet doom buggy/go-cart ride as well!

Here are some more of the Sprites including Romeo (the red one), OJ (the orange one), Spark (the yellow one), Lucky (the green one), Champ (the blue one), and I believe IQ (the purple one)…

I’m assuming these were released all throughout the year as I found some for Valentines day (below) and summer beach-y fun (above)….

…as well as amusement park fun like this next sheet.

And finally we have something that’s seasonally appropriate for today (being the beginning of December), a Christmas sheet!

Now, I wonder if there were ever any puffy stickers? Or fuzzy, faux-felt stickers for the Sprites?!?

So, in just a couple of weeks Branded in the 80s will turn 8 years old. Though it’s kind of arbitrary, we tend to focus on the “big” anniversaries in the five-year increment territory, but I had a couple of milestones I really wanted to hit when I started this project. The first was making it to the seven year mark because I have a special fondness for that particular digit. The second is marking the 8th birthday of the site because again, it has a special meaning to me. I first dreamed of having my own little spot on the internet back around 1998. I’d been farting around the interwebs via AOL and Compuserve and I really wanted to stake out a small piece of the digital landscape to do something. My best friend, who was in the midst of getting his computer science degree at the time, had just recently built a website for a class project and he promised me he’d help me build one of my own. It never materialized, though a lot of that had to do with my not knowing exactly what it was that I wanted to do with a website. Regardless, that marks the beginning of what would eventually become Branded, and it took me eight long years of brainstorming and procrastinating before I eventually settled on what I wanted to do. So in the back of my brain I’ve always hoped that I’d be able to keep this thing going at least as long as it took me to get it off the ground. Well, mission accomplished I guess. As for my next milestone, well, I don’t really have one I guess. I’m kind of curious to see what will happen at the eleven year mark considering that will mean that I would have spent slightly more time talking about the 80s than the decade itself lasted.

Anyway, when I look back at where the site started and where it really took off for me the one aspect that kind of changed everything was when I started investing in a pretty stupidly large collection of 80s stickers to scan and share. Part of this came out of wanting to acquire a bunch of the stickers I had as a kid, but another was that there was a distinct lack of sticker scans floating around on the internet and I felt like it was an opportunity to contribute a small portion to the digital nostalgic pop culture zeitgeist. One of the aspects I love about the nostalgia-minded community is the eagerness to share the cool junk that we love. So it was pretty neat timing that while I was thinking back on all of this I was approached by the cool lady behind the rad RainbowBrite.co.uk website with to help share some fun stuff.

She obviously runs a pretty neat Rainbow Brite fan site, so she acquired a bunch of info and ephemera to post up there. But in her research and collecting she’s amassed a bunch of other cool non-RB stuff that she felt needed to get out there. So she graciously offered to send me some scans of a pretty neat 1985 Mattel Events Guide to share here at Branded. Tying this in a bit more into my silly milestone is that I just happened to turn eight the year this Event guide was published (seriously, there has to be something to this, numerology-wise…)

These event guides were sent out to retailers as a way for Mattel to bolster excitement for their product lines and I’m sure to secure a larger market share of the retail market by encouraging stores to increase orders and devote more shelf and peg space to Mattel stuff. They did this by helping to host local in-store meet and greet events with some of Mattel’s most popular brands and characters. So if you were lucky enough to shake hands with Skeletor at a Toys R Us back int he day, most likely this was one of the guides that the store had to help them schedule and promote the event…

It’s really cool to get a glimpse into this aspect of the marketing and promotion of some of our favorite toys from back in the 80s. Not only is it cool to see some rad artwork that only exists to promote these in-store events (like the neat illustration of the Hot Wheels play area that was shipped to the store), but it’s also awesome to see and read about some of the swag for the event that was either given away (like the Hot Wheels kid’s drivers licenses) or became a “free item with purchase” like the super cool Hot Wheels combination watch/wallet below!

1985 was also a great year for Mattel toys because they were hip deep in the Marvel Secret Wars toy line…

What really struck me about this Secret Wars event is that it wasn’t just geared towards boys. Mattel makes it clear that “boys AND girls” will received a free water color poster. That kind of inclusion back in the 80s seems pretty rare, but then again, Mattel worked on some pretty progressive toy lines like these two favorites, Princess of Power and Masters of the Universe! I mean I know most of the boys who were into He-Man were also secretly into She-Ra…

Man, I feel like I missed out so much on these in-store events. I never managed to attend one and after reading through this guide I feel like I missed out on some amazing experiences and swag. So, I wonder if a little boy could have been initiated into the Legion of Good receiving a free golden power ring and poster? I sure as hell hope so. Also, holy crap, a 15 foot high replica of the Crystal Castle?!? How awesome would that have been to see? I wonder if the stores had to ship them back or of they were ordered to destroy them. I have to imagine that one of these must have made it into a private collection. Hell, at that size it would practically be big enough for kids to play in as a fort. The mid boggles at the possibilities…

Apparently for ’85 Mattel introduced new full body costumes for He-Man and Skeletor. I’ve seen photos of buff guys in the He-Man duds before, but never a full body costume like this complete with toy-accurate mask and all. I like that they even managed to replicate the spiny fin on Skeletor’s wrists (like on the toy…) Sadly there was no 15 foot Castle Greyskull or Snake Mountain, but there were some pretty rad glow in the dark posters!

A lot of this stuff has to be pretty rare. I searched for awhile and couldn’t find and example of the glow in the dark Masters of the Universe poster (not even on He-Man.org!) So it;s cool at least to get a glimpse into this promotional world to know that this stuff exists. FYI, there’s a bit more to this Event Guide, specifically the Rainbow Brite section, but if you want to see that head on over to the cool RainbowBrite.co.uk to find out what was in that in-store event. Thanks again to them for sharing this rad piece of 80s toy ephemera and helping to make the nostalgia community that much richer!

I was recently inspired by Tim over at Flashlights Are Something to Eat and Johnny at Freddy in Space to finally get off my butt and write about a topic I’ve been meaning to get to for what seems like forever, namely, taking an awesome 80s film and finding cool stuff in the background that makes said film even more awesome. Specifically I wanted to take a closer look at some of the kid’s bedrooms that I kind of obsess over. Not sure if I’m going to make this a reoccurring column just yet, but either way I wanted to focus on just one room today. Probably my favorite kid’s bedroom in an 80s flick, let’s take a closer look at Sara’s room from 1987′s Adventures in Babysitting!

So, Matt at Dinosaur Dracula recently wrote about this room, mainly to point out the inclusion of a certain plush toy that I’ll get to in a minute, and pretty much anyone who has seen this flick knows that Sara is mildly obsessed with a nordic Marvel character that goes by the name Thor (ever heard of him?), but there is a metric ton of other cool stuff in this room…

So, let’s take a look at what I was able to spy in the room. In the screen shot above we of course have a ton of Thor references (which I haven’t numbers because that was just going to get out of hand) including the large cut-out standee on the wall to the right, the wicked awesome Thor bedspread, the Thor Halloween mask hanging from the right bedpost, and the super cool drawing of Thor on the rainbow bridge to the upper left of the bed. So, what else is hiding in this image…

*UPDATE #2* I don’t know where that Hot Dog is from (Thanks to Jack Frost for solving the Hot Dog mystery!), but I managed to find a clearer picture, as well as a better one of Sparks…

Moving right along, here’s out next screen shot…

Okay, I’m officially going to give up counting Thor references because there are like a billion on the floor by Sara. I will say that it’s rad how often she can be seen sporting the Thor helmet. More importantly, this shot has two more awesome background elements…

Next up we have three more Thor sitings with another large standee, the light switch cover above it (not on the actual light switch as it’s one of those weird paddle switches) an another drawing above that. And on the shelf to the right…

12). Transformers Dinobots Snarl wall clock from Concept Clocks (which happens to have a reversible image plate with the Insecticon Bombshell on the other side!) It’s so damn rad that Sara is also a major Transformers fan…

In the above shot you can get a better look at that Thor drawing on the wall (and there’s another off to the right.) But let’s take a look at the bookshelves shall we…

14). A 2nd set of Transformers Walkie Talkies, this one shaped like Optimus Prime

*UPDATE #3* I have no idea what that red plush is next to the Transformers clock. It looks like it has a ton of sharp teeth though. *Thanks to Newton G. of Infinite Hollywood for identifying the red toothy plush as LB the Bounder from Teddy Ruxpin!

And for the last screenshot, a much more recognizable background item…

So there you have it. Sara from Adventures in Babysitting has a pretty darn awesome bedroom filled with all kinds of rad toys, a lot of which I wished I had as a kid. Did you spot anything that I missed?

*UPDATE #4* Can anyone identify the grey and red robot by Sara’s feet? Thanks to Tintod at the wicked awesome Junk Fed for identifying the robot at Sara’s feet as none other than a Jim the Politician remote control robot!